the waves
arrangement, abandonment, and the great negation. (november 22nd, 2023)
FADE IN:
INT. HOUSE— BEDROOM— EARLY MORNING.
WE OPEN on THE BODY, which is sitting at a desk in a dark green wingback chair, legs crossed and draped over the desk so its feet don’t touch the wood. The desk is covered in an assortment of small stuffed animals, paperback novels shoved against the walls, and various trinkets— a broken clock, a box of stones, peacock feathers, glass beads, decorative dishes, etcetera. A dim light hangs from a shelf, covered with an orange scarf. THE BODY is wearing children’s underwear, an old boyfriend’s high school hockey jersey, and a blanket wrapped around its shoulders. It is sorting the books into various piles, then disbanding them and resorting the books into different piles.
THE BODY: (Narrating) Well, well. So we meet again.
THE BODY’s brow furrows, pushing one stack of books against the wall and pulling another away from the wall, replacing and resorting the books. Dissatisfied, it repeats the process to a slightly different result. It then does it again.
THE BODY: (Narrating) (quietly) I think it comes out when I’m sick. Or maybe when I’m bitter. Or maybe when God gets too quiet— it’s come on earlier than usual this year, the silence. I usually don’t get this desperate until February. (Pauses) I do not tear my clothes. I do not gnash my teeth. It lasts as long as it possibly can, but there is no suffering, and there is no lack of suffering. I get claustrophobic when there’s so much everything, even though infinity is just another word for zero. The nothingness gets claustrophobic, too. And then it’s just arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads.
As THE BODY looks to the clock, we realize that it is 4:32 a.m. There are remnants of eyeliner beneath its eyes, smudged and creased. Its hair is messy. THE BODY has not slept.
THE BODY: (Narrating) I’ve tried walking and hot tea and counting sheep and all sorts of music, you know. This is a form of malnutrition. I’ve been very bad.
We watch THE BODY go through the paces with the books again like a caged animal. Its posture is relaxed and casual, but the continuous actions of stacking and reordering give the impression of a desire for control.
THE BODY: (Narrating) Do you ever get the idea that we’re all about to surrender ourselves to something we don’t have a choice in surrendering to? We’ll go to sleep and when we wake up, the wave will already be over our heads. Everything we love goes into the water with us. Everything divine and kind. And the wave— nothing is stopping the wave, so you sit there and wait for it, and then you go under and you never come back up. No air, no food. And all the angels could come down from Heaven and raise a big fuss over you but it won’t stop the wave, and maybe even God joins in, but that doesn’t stop the wave either because they’re all going to get hit by the wave in a matter of time. Later than we will, sure, but it’ll find them. There will have to be a great negation because the life-death balance isn’t balanced just yet. We didn’t use to exist which means that everything that exists will eventually not exist. I know this because the crows told me while they rooted through my trash for food.
THE BODY glances towards the door, then sighs.
THE BODY: (Narrating) At least I have a bed now.
A pause. THE BODY picks up a deck of playing cards and absentmindedly shuffles them with precise, practiced movements.
THE BODY: (Narrating) I am doing my best to not believe in determinism, but this is a world that is determined to keep you stupid and choosing the path of least resistance. I am doing my best to not get stupid, but I get bored and everyone gets worried about me. I am doing my best to not end up dealing blackjack or waiting tables in Arizona or getting paid next to nothing for something that drains the life out of me or in rehab. No promises, but I can try.
THE BODY drops the cards in sudden revulsion, swinging its legs off the desk and moving over to the window, where it removes a partially-smoked cigarette from an Altoids box and pushes open the hatch, leaning out of it as it lights up. It’s the second to last one in the tin. The air is cold— goosebumps appear on THE BODY as it takes a drag.
THE BODY: (Out loud) Let’s play a game.
It pops its neck and back, still halfway out the window.
THE BODY: (Narrating) The game is called ABANDONMENT. First you have to leave yourself. Put yourself in a closet and put a chair under the doorknob. Lock yourself into the heavy metal chest you found at a Goodwill, wrap chains around it, and then throw it into the ocean. Abandon identifiers. Stop drinking coffee, shave your head, throw away your skin care and clothing, delete all social media. Get blackout drunk and then never have a drink again. Recede into isolation and then don’t spend a moment alone. Pick up smoking, snorting, shooting up just so you can get sober again. Practice your accents, go to coffee shops and restaurants and stores, and pretend to be someone else. Act in opposition to your desires. If you push your limits, you’ll be surprised how little you actually want. This is an exercise in dependence and reaction. You are learning what you truly are.
(Takes a drag)
THE BODY: (Narrating) I’m going to quit for realsies, eventually. I think.
A pause. We watch the street below— it’s a clear night, no clouds, very little wind. The sky is a rich blue. The pavement is dark, like there’s been rain recently. The streetlamp gathers a swarm of silver-winged moths into its light. A car passes; we hear the drone of tires on asphalt long before we see it, and we hear it long after it leaves our sight.
THE BODY: (Narrating) Abandon the need for possessions. Abandon the need for entertainment. Abandon your need for consumption. Identity isn’t the clothes you wear or the pin on your jacket or the collection of poetry you just bought. If your selfhood is found in material goods, then you need to kill your self. You won’t die. Death is an invented concept— there is only change in the mode of existence. Nothing ends. You’re going to kill the part of you that thinks a new shirt will fix you, and then you’re going to change, and you might not be happy but this isn’t about happiness, this is about self respect.
You don’t need everything they told you to need and it’s foolish to believe them. They want you to forget that human beings are still animals— sweat, hair, flesh, blood, cum, spit, piss. It’s as simple and primitive as that. Stop trying to demonstrate insignificance by saying that you’re an ant in the grand scheme of the universe. You’re a human. Humans aren’t ants, but we’re equally insignificant, as is every other animal. Then: abandon the idea that insignificance is bad. That’s another lie you’ve been told. You’re not going to be a hero or a rock star or an influencer or a writer or a nepotism baby who girls use pictures of as reaction photos. There is no such thing as glory and it’s best if you learn to stop wanting it. Wanting is the pain that all things know, and it can be removed— the pain can be removed. Beauty is pointless and nonexistent, too. It’s not real. Give up. Give the fuck up.
(Takes a drag, long exhale)
Nothing is real, really. We can’t prove that anything is real. We can’t prove anything exists outside our head. We can’t prove that we didn’t make this all up. I might be a figment of your imagination, or you might be a figment of mine. It’s not so serious. If it’s imaginary, we imagined something beautiful. You can flex your foot and feel dozens of ligaments and bones move. You deserve just as much as everything else does, which is nothing, and nothing is everything, so you deserve it all. Don’t you?
THE BODY ashes the cigarette in one of the teacups on the windowsill, but stays by the open window for a beat. It looks to the east, then pulls itself back into the room and closes the window, leaning against it. THE BODY gestures to the contents of the room— the books, the abundant trinkets, the CDs and stuffed animals, the clothing and shoes, the instruments.
THE BODY: (Narrating) If something came into my room and ate everything inside it, furniture and all, leaving only dust and sand— the accumulated efforts of my life, everything I have ever enjoyed and thought to be valuable— I’m not even sure I would be sad. Put off, maybe. Inconvenienced. Disappointed. I don’t think I would feel any despair, though. Nothing that solicits a bigger reaction out of me than an “oh, well”. I feel like I’m tempting fate by saying this, and I don’t want to do that— I like my stuff a whole lot because there was a time where I didn’t have stuff that was mine, and this is a vast step up from that. I’d miss it. I’d miss it, for sure. But nothing hurts me. Nothing gets under my skin; I reckon it must be stone.
THE BODY walks across the room to the bed, where it picks up a stuffed bear with matted fur and black glass eyes. It presses the bear to its chest, moving back towards the desk and taking a seat in the green wingback again.
THE BODY: (Out loud) I think that’s a lie, but I don’t know because it hasn’t happened yet.
BEAR: Sometimes you like to say things just to see if they make you nauseous or not. To see if you’re telling the truth.
LOVER: The truth isn’t accessible to me yet— truth is negation, and negation is the truth, I think— so I aim for aesthetics instead. The Ecstatic Truth. The sublime.
BEAR: We can only touch God while we’re alive.
LOVER: We can only touch while we’re alive.
Slowly, THE BODY begins to sort the books on the desk again, the bear in its lap. It pulls out nine books, leaves them on the desk, and then puts the multitudes of remaining books back into the bookshelf. The nine books get stacked and restacked, then pushed against the wall. THE BODY is satisfied.
THE BODY: (Narrating) I’m clearer now than I was when we first talked. The fever made me crazy— it got in my head. I’ve only got a cold now. It’s not so bad, just bad enough to make me revert to a familiar structure. I’ve come out of the fire and into the freezing water. I talk to God but the sky is empty. I talk to myself but I am empty. I call things my friends but they can’t talk back. I’m not lonely, but it’s coming for me— I can feel the spray on my neck— I can hear the roar. And there’s nothing I can do, so I just have to wait.
(Pauses)
THE BODY: (Singing quietly) Heaven cannot wait forever— darling, just start the chase…